[May 27, 2013] Major Update in Pie

    Take up the challenge and play Dark RO Pie! Invite your friends as well to this great adventure!

   An extensive explanation of the update of Dark RO Pie as stated by Administrator Matias.

• Pie will be undergoing a beta phase

           -Changing to renewal is a major issue, as it changes the gameplay a lot. Things might get changed, balanced, improved, tweaked, removed, implemented, and what not. This beta phase will last as long as needed, however we don't expect it to last more than 2-3 months top.
           -We might disable or enable things as needed in order to achieve everything that we want, which is bring back Pie to life, make it entertaining and active.
           -New commands such as @seeitems and @dance (Type @commands ingame for more info on available commands).

• From eAthena to Hercules

           -DarkRO has always worked with eAthena, despite the many forks that have appeared all  through the years, however for the past 1-2 years, eAthena's development has decreased a LOT, mainly because there have been no more pre-re updates and some internal issues within the community/staff. There have been a few forks and the last one to appear is Hercules (http://www.hercules.ws), which has been having a HUGE development activity in a really short period of time. The staff is highly serious and competent, making it by far the best choice to go with now.
           -They are really trying to pull a decent emulator with a lot of work to improve the server's performance, code, features and such. With this, you can expect a high level of updates and development activity and a really stable server (I am actually really proud, the new test server has proven to be far more stable than the previous one and a lot less resource consuming, giving a far better performance, which is something they're highly concerned about).
           -The new emulator has a lot of development level, which means a lot of bug fixing from their side, a lot of improvements and a lot of updates for everyone. Also something pretty big is the resource usage, they've managed to cut it down to 1/3 of what eAthena had. So it means a far better performance, more stable server and all those nice perks you guys don't really notice but the machine it is hosted on does.

• Pie will be updated to renewal mechanics and renewal content

           -Content should be up to Episode 14, just right Before Eclage implementation. Renewal changes the game mechanics on its most part, making it almost a brand new game to start playing and learning.

• The rates will not be modified

           -There is also a rather big extent of people who enjoy playing low rates, so there shall be no need for changing the rates on Pie. We've throughout discussed this and at some point we will make Battle Manuals questable for those interested in a higher experience situation. (This still has to be worked on and might take some time to think how to do it properly).

• Third jobs will be temporarily disabled

           -Renewal was built for a 3rd job realm. There is no denying in that. However, in order to maintain a certain level of balance we have decided to disable 3rd Jobs implementation until the population grows to a certain extent.This should help current and new players who are a bit off in their leveling to catch up and get more people to Trans level, so once 3rd jobs are released, a lot of people will be able to play together and party without a major gap in the levels for parties. (Not to mention the advantages people could get through WoE/PvE to gain better equipment and remain being OP in comparison to new comers)

• Godly and high level equipment will have their effect discarded temporarily

           -To further on balancing out old vs new players, we've decided to temporarily disable all high level equipment and anything that could be slightly overpowered, specially when it comes to WoE. Some of the items that will be disabled would be: Dragon Wings, Hokage Hat, Icarus Wings, Valkyrie items, Godly items, Satan Morroc and Naght Seger drops. (This won't necessarily be all of it, we might disable some more items or disable them through the beta period in order to reduce the gap.)

• WoE changes/Battlegrounds

           -WoE 2.0 Will NOT be enabled for now.
           -WoE/Battlegrounds will be enabled but only with 1 agit. All the other castles will remain closed. (It will be the same castle for every WoE.) This castle will have random castle drops to allow everyone gather required quest items and such. All Castles will be resetted. Yggdrassil Berries and Seeds will be disabled on WoE and Battlegrounds.

• Staff changes

           -We've decided to let go all the staff members of Pie. Such small community doesn't require high amount of Staff and its nothing two GMs can't handle. Not to mention that most of Pie's staff has been inactive for a really long time, they havnt been kicked yet, but now is the time.
           -There will be Staff recruitment once the population gives us enough alternatives to recruit active Staff members, worry not as this is a concern, but with a low population as it is, there is no need to do it now.
           -Jero as a new Pie GM.

• Donations will be disabled temporarily

           -Most of the items will be disabled, donations will also be disabled. While you may still donate if you want to support us, there will be no gift available for now (You will still receive your DPs to claim once donations are available), except for perhaps supplies (No tickets/bonus point gifts for now).
As for everything else, this is meant to balance a bit more the servers meta game.

     Everything that would be disabled (3rd class, WoE, WoE:SE, Battlegrounds, Items) will be enabled as the population grows. For example (I am throwing random numbers), once we reach 30 active players, we will open a second castle, if we reach 50 active players we will open a whole town. If we reach 50 active players we might enable some of the higher level equipment, etc. Once something has proven to be needed and not kill competition, it will be enabled.

     Report any bugs here.

Disclaimer
   I do not own any of the content. Content is from Dark RO staff. I only took the salient points of the posts from here: Link 1, Link 2. Picture is from Dark RO website.